Friday, December 23, 2011

Defying the Forces of Nature (Part II)

Progressives will argue that the large portion of Americans (Tea Party members) pushing back against ObamaCare and other Obama policies are doing so because they are racists. This is absurd. The people of Missouri supported a referendum to oppose the ObamaCare mandate to purchase healthcare insurance by over 40 points. This means a large portion of Democrats oppose this controversial provision of the ObamaCare law. This is not racism, but Americans concerned over the future of their healthcare quality and the costs associated with it.

The same analogy of forces can be applied to other Obama policies including the Recovery Act (stimulus), corporate bailouts, and Financial Reform. The Recovery Act added a massive downward force to our debt, but at the same time it has failed in its objective to create jobs. Thus, many people are opposed to this pork riddled legislation and this is therefore, creating a strong frictional (resistant) force opposed to the policy. The bailout of auto and financial corporations had the same negative effect on the American public and to our growing national debt. Financial Reform has also created a massive downward force to our financial markets by creating new bureaucracies in charge of enforcing new mandates, restrictions, and regulations on Wall Street institutions.

There is a reason why our founding fathers made it difficult to amend the Constitution – popularity results in both less downward gravitational and horizontal frictional (resistance) forces. It takes two-thirds of a majority in both legislative houses of our federal government and three-fourth of all state governments to approve the law before it can be amended to the Constitution. This ensures the law is popular and will not be controversial so that a large majority of American citizens will oppose (resist) it to create unnecessary frictional forces. Popular laws also reduce downward gravitational forces working to push the law out of equilibrium. This is true because popular laws are bipartisan and therefore, not overly complicated to add massive amounts of bureaucracies and or costs to the law. This is why laws such as healthcare reform should be decided in the same fashion proposed by our founding fathers - by amending the Constitution. Healthcare reform should not be decided by slim majorities in Congress without any state government approval. And healthcare reform should not be decided by the courts. Although the supremacy clause of the Constitution can trump state referendums, courts and Washington politicians would be wise to heed to the wishes of the American people. After all, our government is elected to represent the will of the people and not to satisfy the political agenda or ideology of egomaniac Washington politicians.

In summary, popular laws amended to the Constitution would avoid and eliminate unnecessary forces that defy nature by making laws bureaucratic, wasteful, expensive, and unpopular.